A consumer may connect to a website and access information or purchase products and/or services. Some websites may display banner advertisements (banner ads) in downloaded webpages. For example, the website may display a banner ad for a watch company while the consumer is viewing a webpage for an on-line news service.
During a first web session, the consumer may access a first website for the watch company or may use an internet search engine to search for watches. The first website or search engine may provide browser history to an advertising network. The advertising network also may have loaded a third party cookie into the browser that contains a user identifier.
The user may later access a second website for the on-line news service. A webpage on the second website may include a banner ad that connects to the advertising network. The third party cookie may send the user identifier and consumer profile information back to the advertising network. The consumer profile information may contain user browsing history, such as the prior visit to the first watch website.
Seeing that the user previously visited the watch website, the advertising network may assume the user is interested in watches. The advertising network then may send an advertisement from a watch company to the second website for the on-line news service for inserting into the banner ad.
Consumers may have privacy concerns with advertising networks tracking their visits to different websites. For example, consumers may not want personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, linked with their browsing history. However, the advertising network may need to track the consumer browser history to locate the correct advertisements for inserting into the banner ads.